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Calls to Arm TSA Following LAX Shooting; New Book Details Behind-the-Scenes Maneuvering in 2012 Election; Accusations of Plagiarism Against Sen. Rand Paul.

Aired November 04, 2013 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Take a look at this. Right now the markets are mixed. You see the Dow Jones up, what, almost five points. Not much movement right now. Investors are waiting on a major economic report due out Thursday. That could move the markets, as we all know.

Right now Twitter is raising the price range for its IPO later this week. Shares will go for between $23 to $25 a share, instead of the $17 to $20 right now.

And right now the phone maker Blackberry says it's dropping plans to sell off the troubled company and the company's CEO is resigning. We'll see what that means.

We're also learning more about the shooter who killed one TSA officer at L.A.X. on Friday and wounded three other people, two of them also TSA officers. The shooter, Paul Ciancia, had a note with him saying he wanted to kill TSA employees to quote, "instill fear into their traitorous minds." There have been calls over the weekend to arm TSA officers. Here's how the former homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge, responded to that idea on CNN's "New Day" earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM RIDGE, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: What I'm more concerned about right now is the predictable response, you know, right after -- I was on the Virginia Tech panel. And right after the Virginia Tech tragedy, people thought we should arm students. And then we had the school room tragedies and they want to arm teachers. Now there's conversations about arming the TSA. We don't need to arm America. We don't need to arm the unarmed. We really need to figure out why so many people go to violence to solve their problems or express their grievances.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Tom Ridge, earlier in the day.

Let's bring in HLN law enforcement analyst, Mike Brooks.

Mike, is it a good idea, arming TSA officers? Could that have prevented this shooting?

MIKE BROOKS, HLN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: I don't think if they were armed, it would have been prevented, Wolf. Because he just came right up to that officer and put the gun almost point-blank range and pulled the trigger. Even if they were armed, this still would have happened. But every airport has an armed law enforcement presence. It is not the TSA. They're there for a different mission. They are there to check baggage, to make sure that nobody gets onto a plane with a weapon, with a bomb. That's their job. Leave the other -- gun-toting if you will, to the law enforcement officers who are there at the airport.

BLITZER: Some have suggested putting metal detectors outside as you get into the airport buildings. Is that a good idea?

BROOKS: We've talked about that before. Right after 9/11, that that conversation came up again. I was with Delta Airlines corporate security at the time and the aviation security and we talked about that. But if you put metal detectors right at the front door of every airport, you're going to have people waiting for hours in line to get on board the planes. So you know there's a happy medium somewhere along the way, Wolf, and maybe it has to do with placement of law enforcement, additional law enforcement inside and outside the airport.

BLITZER: What about this idea, a lot of people saying it should be sort of mandatory -- you have the unarmed TSA officers at the screening facilities, but you also have a few, not many, but a few armed police officers there as well. Sometimes there are no armed police officers at the screening areas.

BROOKS: Well, usually, you'll see an officer on the secure side after you go through the magnetometer, after you go through the screening, sitting there at a podium. We heard Chief Gannon from the airport police at LAX say he had just redeployed the officers to the front, because he also said he thinks there's a threat from the curb to the security checkpoint. There is. But I think you need officers on both sides. Because, had you had one in the old spot where the podium was, would that have stopped this gunman as he was coming through the checkpoint? Possibly. But I think you need law enforcement on either side, in uniform, and also in plainclothes -- Wolf?

BLITZER: So many of the incidents lately in recent years, a lone individual gets a gun, starts killing people. Clearly, there's a mental health issue under way right now. And how do you deal with people who have severe mental health problems and they have voices telling them to go out and kill people, what do you do in a situation like this? Because that's clearly a major problem in these mass shootings.

BROOKS: It is, Wolf. And you know, it's the access to firearms, also. You know, and the mentally ill, being able to get firearms. Because when you fill out the form, the ATF form, to get your weapon, you can fill it out -- you have a mental health issue, yes or no? But I think it's also, you know, when we talk about mental health, people who are out of mental facilities, not on their medicine, these kinds of things. But I think it's also a law enforcement issue. Because when you have people out there like this, you know, these things are bound to happen. And they're going to continue to happen. Wolf, you walk around the streets of Washington, D.C., and you see people all the time talking to themselves, hollering at people. You know, that's mental health issues. How do we solve this? That's a long discussion that is being addressed but we still have not addressed it the way it needs to be, I don't think -- Wolf?

BLITZER: I think we need to address it. You're absolutely right. It's a huge issue all over the country, dealing with these individuals who clearly have mental health problems.

Mike Brooks, thanks very much.

So why did the Romney campaign refer to the New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, as puffer fish? We're going to tell you the story behind the name, other revelations from a new political tell-all. Stand by. We've got more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: A major new book is blowing the lid off the behind-the- scenes maneuvering going on during the 2012 presidential race. We'll tell you about some of the revelations in the brand new book, "Double Down." One of the headlines that's come out over the past few days is that some in the Obama campaign were mulling over the idea of replacing Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton.

I actually had heard about that from some of my own sources during the campaign. And I even asked Hillary Clinton about it in April of 2012.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: If the president of the United States says, Madam Secretary, I need you on the ticket this year, in order to beat Romney, are you ready to run as his vice presidential running mate?

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE & FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: That is not going to happen. That's like saying, if the Olympic Committee called you up and said, are you ready to run the marathon, would you accept? Well, it's not going to happen.

BLITZER: I disagree.

CLINTON: Oh, well --

(LAUGHTER)

BLITZER: I think it's possible. It's unlikely, I will say that.

CLINTON: It's more than unlikely.

BLITZER: If he sees in July that he's going down, he doesn't want to be a one-term president.

CLINTON: But Leon and I are in this awkward position because we've both been in politics and now we're into jobs that are out of politics for all the right reasons. So I don't comment on politics any more. But I'm very confident about the outcome of this election. And as I've said many times, I think, you know, Joe Biden, who is a dear friend of ours, has served our country and served the president very well. So I'm out of politics, but I'm very supportive of the team that we have in the White House going forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Our CNN political reporter, Peter Hamby is joining us to talk about this and other insights.

You wrote a major review about the book. It was never all that realistic, although they did a focus group to see what difference it would make if Hillary Clinton would replace Joe Biden on the ticket.

PETER HAMBY, CNN: Yes, that's right, Wolf. According to the authors, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, Obama officials did a focus group on the idea of replacing Biden with Clinton. Since the book has come out, a number of Obama officials, from Jay Carney to David Axelrod to former White House chief of staff, Bill Daley, said they were just doing due diligence. The campaign, the Obama world is famously data- driven. They want to test every scenario. David Axelrod said yesterday they did test it and it made no difference whatsoever. But they were just doing, again, their due diligence here. And that it was never a real possibility, and that it was never taken to President Obama. And Obama officials say if they did take that to him, they would have been laughed out of the room -- Wolf?

BLITZER: And you saw Hillary Clinton chuckle when I asked her about it.

Let's talk about another Clinton, Bill Clinton. There's fascinating insight in the book as far as the supposed deal that the Obama campaign, President Obama made with Bill Clinton to campaign for him back in 2012.

HAMBY: Yeah, this was interesting. Remember how much of an asset Bill Clinton was to the Obama campaign. We all remember that speech in Charlotte at the Democratic National Convention. The authors report there was an extended courtship effort behind the scenes from the Obama campaign to get Bill Clinton involved in the race, to get out on the road and talk about the middle class issues that he's so good at talking about on the stump. But according to the book, Clinton aide, Doug Band (ph), issued an ultimatum to the Obama campaign saying bill is only going to help you guys if you pay off Hillary Clinton's campaign debt from 2008. Now the number was actually kind of negligible, only about a quarter million dollars. But the act of just asking for him to pay off this debt, the quid pro quo apparently struck Obama campaigns as sort of an offensive thing. But they eventually agreed to it. And as we saw during the campaign, Clinton became a very strong asset for the president on the stump.

BLITZER: And delivered a brilliant speech at the Democratic convention, as we all remember as well.

The book also suggests that the Romney campaign had some unusual sort of fish nicknames for the potential vice presidential running mates. How did they come up with those names? HAMBY: Well the nickname, according to the book, again, the vice presidential search in the Romney campaign was Project Goldfish, named after the snack food -- is apparently pretty popular at the Romney headquarters. These were the five candidates who were actually vetted for the position. Chris Christie was puffer fish. Tim Pawlenty was lake fish. Ryan from Wisconsin was fish-consin.

The more vice presidential news out of this book, Wolf, I think was that the Romney campaign had some real concerns about what they found in Chris Christie's vetting file in the course of doing background research on him and his career. And ultimately, they decided not to pick him as a vice presidential nominee because of some concerns about a defamation lawsuit that was filed against him in the '90s. Investigation from the Justice Department into his U.S. attorney term. So lots of questions about Chris Christie, who is probably going to win the governorship of New Jersey is going to start answering.

BLITZER: He was also involved with some securities organizations Bernie Madoff was involved with, was the leader of. And that raised, back in 2012, a lot of red flags. They didn't want to have that kind of aggravation going into a race.

Paul Ryan became a running mate. The Romney campaign, they were pretty upset with at Clint Eastwood's performance at the Republican convention, where he was talking for way too long to an empty chair. And the authors of the new book, they've got new insight into what happened after that.

HAMBY: Yeah, Wolf, it's been reported that Clint Eastwood, they let him rip. The Romney campaign was actually pretty diligent about scripting the entire convention. But they kind of gave Clint Eastwood free pass to do whatever he wanted on stage. We knew that. But the authors go behind the stage to tell us what Romney campaign aides and Romney himself were actually doing when they were watching this total train wreck unfold in front of them. Romney thought it was funny at first, but all of his advisers freaked out. His campaign manager said, you've got to pull this, you got to cut it. He went on for 12 minutes. According to the book at least, one Romney adviser actually vomited back stage, that he was so upset. It was a full-blown freak- out back stage at the convention in Tampa.

BLITZER: It wasn't just a Romney adviser. It was Stewart Stevens (ph), his lead political aide, right?

HAMBY: That's what the book says.

BLITZER: That's a big deal. If it's true. Mark Halperin, John Heilemann have done it again. They'll be joining me Thursday in "The Situation Room." We'll pick up our conversation with them then.

Peter Hamby, thanks very much.

HAMBY: thanks.

BLITZER: Go to CNN.com/politics to read Peter's full story, "Ten Secrets from Campaign 2012." I highly recommend it. Senator Rand Paul is pushing back against accusations of plagiarism in some of his speeches. I'll tell you what he's saying in his defense. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Accusations of plagiarism have been mounted against Republican Senator Rand Paul, who is accused of lifting parts of his speeches from the Wikipedia website and not fully disclosing some quoted parts of a research study verbatim. Now the Senator is answering those accusations.

Brian Todd is joining us.

Tell our viewers what's going on. What he's accused of doing?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: He's accused of plagiarism on two fronts. One is the speech that you mentioned. we're going to play an excerpt of that in a second. And also he's accused of plagiarizing one graph, and actually, we found a couple more that were very similar, from this 2012 book called "Government Bullies" that Rand Paul put out. At least one paragraph and several others are very similar from a 2003 study by the Heritage Foundation about a potential Supreme Court case. We found one graph was word for word, every bit the same as the paragraph in the Heritage Foundation's study. But there are many other paragraphs that are very, very similar in this book.

Now, Paul, as you mentioned, Wolf, apparently, also lifted an entry from Wikipedia for a speech he gave at Liberty University last week. There he is going up to the podium. He referenced the 1997 movie "Gattaca." We pulled an excerpt from the speech. We'll play the excerpt and you can see the excerpt from Wikipedia that describes. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RAND PAUL, (R), KENTUCKY: In the movie, "Gattaca," in the not too distant future, eugenics is common and DNA plays the primary role in determining your social class.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TODD: In the book excerpts, we reached out to the publisher, Center Street, about his book and the apparent plagiarism there. We have not got a response back from them, any response back for them on that. Heritage Foundation, which pointed out the study that he apparently lifted those paragraphs from, did not get back to us yet. But they told Buzzfeed, which first reported on all this, that it don't care about this alleged plagiarism -- Wolf?

BLITZER: What is he saying in his own defense?

TODD: Rand Paul was not available to speak to us on camera. We have tried to do that today. But, in an appearance with "ABC News, he said, quote, "I take it as an insult and will not lay down and say people can call me dishonest or intentionally misleading or misrepresenting. I have never intentionally done so." His co-author, Doug Stafford, issued a statement regarding the speech part of all of this, quote, "Senator Paul has always tried to accurately attribute any stories or facts in his speeches. 98 percent of his speeches are extemporaneous and none of his speeches have been previously footnoted. In the future, our office plans on footnoting speeches to avoid any confusion."

As for alleged plagiarism in the book, Doug Stafford said those are cited end notes. We need find some references and end notes, but you can't really match it up with the paragraphs. They don't go specifically to the paragraphs. He said the longer quotes should have been indented and quoted to note a direct quotation, which it is not in the book, Wolf. Senator Paul has tough questions to still answer about all this.

BLITZER: When you say they're cited in end notes, you mean foot notes.

TODD: Right.

BLITZER: But he did mention the Heritage study in the footnote, is that right?

TODD: He mentioned it, but he didn't say -- when he mentioned it in the appendix at the end of the book, he mentioned the Heritage study, but he doesn't say it's mentioned on pay so-and-so of my book. When you see the paragraph in his book where it's word for word what is in that study, he doesn't cite Heritage when he writes that paragraph. So you can't put one together with the other if you're just reading the book and looking at it.

BLITZER: Brian Todd, thanks very much. You're working on the story and will have more in "The Situation Room."

TODD: Right.

BLITZER: Charlie Crist enjoyed his job as governor of Florida so much -- guess what -- he wants it back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLIE CRIST, (R), FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR: Today, I announce I'm running for governor of Florida.

(CHEERING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: This is a different Charlie Crist. He served as governor of Florida from 2007 to 2011. Those days, he was a Republican. But Crist switched parties and, with the 2014 election coming up, he now is running as a Democrat. He could face the current governor, Republican Rick Scott. Crist is already taking aim.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CRIST: Overnight, he went from taking on Tallahassee to becoming the example of what's wrong with the place. The seat that you occupy, the people occupy at the table was replaced by a resolving door of special interests. Each anteing up hundreds of thousands of dollars for the governor's re-election fund to insure their voice was heard and not yours.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Governor Crist ran for Senate as an Independent in 2010. He lost that race to Marco Rubio, who is now the United States Senator from Florida. Rubio got 49 percent, Crist only got 30 percent. Crist running as a third-party Independent.

The words Boston Strong symbolize the city's comeback. But one year after Superstorm Sandy, New York proved its strength as well. Stay with us for one runner's American journey.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: We all know what Boston Strong means to that city. But when almost 50,000 people ran the New York City Marathon, it proved Boston doesn't have a monopoly on the concept. New Yorkers are survivors, too. Superstorm Sandy showed us their grit.

Tom Foreman takes us on an American journey with one woman who just had to run that race.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: On the streets of Baltimore, Karina Christensen spent months preparing for the New York Marathon, adding up the miles and pushing down the memories of what happened to her hometown.

KARINA CHRISTENSEN, MARATHON RUNNER: I had cousins in Long Island with four feet of water in their house.

FOREMAN: Last year, when Sandy washed over the city, it swept away the great race. City officials tried valiantly to run it as scheduled, but the massive property loss and human suffering proved too much.

MARY WITTENBERG, NEW YORK ROAD RUNNERS: The best way to help New York City at this time is to say we will not be conducting the 2012 I.G. New York City Marathon.

FOREMAN: Now, its return is being heralded as symbolic of the city itself. Back are 48,000 runners pouring more than $300 million into the economy.

NED KAFLEGIE (ph), OLYMPIC RUNNER: It's important this year because of what happened last year.

FOREMAN: Back are the elite athletes, like Olympian Ned Kaflegie (ph). In 2009, he became the first American to win New York in more than two decades, and he's brought some perspective.

KAFLEGIE (ph): Winning is not about first place, getting the best out of yourself.

FOREMAN: Back, too, are the millions raised for charity. Even with the cancellation last year, runners raised more than $30 million for groups like Back on my Feet, which helps the homeless. Karina is running for them.

CHRISTENSEN: It shows the spirit of the marathon. It's incredible what people can overcome.

FOREMAN: In short, that's what the marathon's return has been all about, the whole city overcoming the worst and getting back to its best one step at a time.

Tom Foreman, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: I admire those people a lot.

That's it for be. Thanks very much for watching. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. Eastern in "THE SITUATION ROOM."

NEWSROOM continues right now with Brooke Baldwin.